[imagesource: Daily Sabah File Photo]

You might have seen fewer cars on the road during 2020 and 2021, but that doesn’t mean the used car market in South Africa wasn’t getting a fair share of enquiries.

Cars.co.za has revealed a few insights about which car brands and models are most popular during this time, as well as how much South Africans are willing to pay for a used car these days.

The used car “sweet-spot” in 2021 was a car priced between R200 000 and R300 000, with a mileage of just over 100 000 kilometres and first registered around three years ago.

Cars.co.za consumer experience manager Hannes Oosthuizen said via BusinessTech that the enquiries bracket for cars priced between R200 000 and R300 000 made up for 20,6% of enquiries submitted on Cars.co.za during 2021.

Cars priced between R150 000 and R200 000 made up 16,34% of enquiries.

In terms of enquiries about particular brands, most South Africans are loyal to established names, and at a model level, the demand for old favourites remains strong.

Although, Chinese brand Haval is on the rise, with its smash-hit Jolion small crossover doing pretty well as a new entry on the model ranking list.

Haval climbed from the 30th most favourite brand in South Africa in 2020, to 22nd in 2021.

These are the top five used car brands from 2021:

• Volkswagen – 17,68% enquiries
• Toyota – 16,13% enquiries
• Ford – 9,28% enquiries
• BMW – 8,08% enquiries
• Mercedes-Benz – 7,71% enquiries

More than 800 individual model types were listed for sale on Cars.co.za last year, but the top 100 accounted for about 80% of all inquiries submitted, said Oosthuizen.

These are the top five used car models in South Africa according to Cars.co.za:

• Volkswagen Polo – 6,54% enquiries

• Toyota Hilux – 5,28% enquiries

• Ford Ranger – 3,68% enquiries

• BMW 3 Series – 3,39% enquiries

• Mercedes-Benz C-Class – 3,32% enquiries

You can check out the other cars in the top 10 here.

[sources:cars.co.za&businesstech]